A Game in Code
by VulkansNodosaurus
Summary: A Lower Mid-Hive. Pasen Olefle sought to profit from his understanding of code, and died for it. His son looks for vengeance; fate looks for an opening. Written August 2012.


Pasen Olefle was asleep when it began.

He was instantly awoken by a faint sound outside his unit's door. He set up in an instant, throwing his bed into a mess. The people outside his door, in turn, evidently heard that and knocked the entrance open.

The first two men to step in were clearly enforcers. They were giant, almost Ogryn-sized, and each had a look of fury on their angular features. They wore tattered rad-suits, out of which slight signs of mutation pointed- a scale here, a flagellum there. There was nothing serious, nothing that was even visible if you didn't know where to look.

The third person to step through the doorframe into the darkened room was entirely different. She was short, perhaps two-thirds of Olefle's or the enforcers' height; she was even slimmer than Olefle, and held no visible signs of mutation at all save for the feather at the back of her neck, invisible from where Olefle was sitting. This was Lia Janesse, crime lord of the Mid-Sall Hive and Olefle's secret employer. She wore a utilitarian suit, and her hand held a gun- not a good sign, to say the least.

Felwa Janesse stepped in behind her sister, clothed in a formal and rather revealing dress. Unlike Lia, Felwa was extremely beautiful; also unlike Lia, she was quite useless in any profit-making endeavors, and only came along for formal matters as the official head of the family.

"You're about to kill me, aren't you? After all I've done?"

Olefle didn't like begging for his life, but he had done it once before and survived; perhaps he would be lucky again. That, though, was unlikely to say the least. Janesse rarely backed down.

"It's a business matter," Lia noted, "and we've even chosen a time when your family would be absent. Little Lesaf will be all right."

She said the words with only a slight hint of irony, which with her indicated seriousness, and Pasen felt great relief. Still, he didn't particularly want to die. "And who's to say I don't-"

"Don't bluff. It doesn't fit you. We've turned off all cameras, alarms, et cetera for a kilometer around."

Pasen bowed his head in acceptance, but then lifted it again. If this was it, he was going out like he had always wanted to. "You will be punished for what you've done. Not with me, but with the Emperor's light."

Lia hesitated, but only for an instant. "The Emperor's light doesn't reach this far down," she proclaimed.

Then she fired. Olefle made no attempt to struggle- it would only be ridiculous with the bodyguards. Instead, he thought of the Emperor, smiled, and faded even as he fell.

That morning, the camera in Olefle's hidden cogitator turned off without the morning command.

* * *

><p>Lesaf Olefle still remembered his father.<p>

Seven years had passed since the murder, but Lesaf still didn't understand why it had happened. It was about the only thing he didn't understand about it. His father had been shot, his grandfather had committed suicide over the news, his mother had died in childbirth several months later because of the stress- all of that made sense; but Lesaf still had no idea who had destroyed his then-five-year-old life.

In that, the culprit was very lucky, because as soon as Lesaf found out who had killed his father, he would kill them.

He'd inherited quite a few skills over time, largely learned from tutorials his father had left behind. The art of coding, of information, had been a matter in which his father had excelled. It was his life; it was also, most likely, his death. Lesaf had sworn to learn everything he could from what Pasen Olefle had left behind, and in that he considered himself quite successful.

But not successful enough. Not yet.

So instead of hunting his father's killer, Lesaf Olefle lay curled up in front of his cogitator, listening to the latest holo-vid from the Key Word series. It was one of the three kid holo-vids he still watched, entirely due to nostalgia. Gref Grox and Karnyssa Kraken would talk about a certain word each day and how it related to one's life. Today's word was "privacy", which Gref and Karnyssa unnecessarily explained was the state of not being observed.

"Who has the most of it?" Gref asked Karnyssa.

"The people who have the most money, of course," Karnyssa said. "In the Overhive, in the palaces, it's easy to get privacy. In the Underhive, you often have to build secret compartments."

"Yuuum," Gref said, "secret compartments."

Secret compartments?

In his half-asleep state it took a moment for the concept to percolate through Lesaf's mind. As soon as it did, though, he imagined one in the room around him. Anything could be hidden there!

"You have to knock to find them," Gref was saying, "and the compartment will sound hollow. But it's not worth bothering. They aren't usually heretical."

"People can keep all sorts of things hidden, and that's also part of privacy," Karnyssa explained. Suddenly, Inquisitor Irene Imball fell from above into the screen. A camera was in her hand.

"Remember: too much privacy breeds heresy!" she half-screamed at Lesaf. "Cults-"

Lesaf flicked the holo-vid off. He wasn't going to be an Inquisitor, so all he needed to do was stay in the Emperor's Light to be loyal. Besides, he was going to be searching for secret compartments now. At first, Lesaf tried mentally sketching out patterns of search lines; then he decided to use his cogitator to find the optimum.

It got the pattern from the databases, and Lesaf began knocking. He wasn't sure exactly what the difference between hollow and solid was- he'd never searched for hidden chambers before; but after knocking away on half of the walls, he found a very slight difference in sound near the room's northwestern corner.

It took several hits from the hammer to get a hole, and Lesaf regretted using one as soon as he saw that the object hidden inside was a cogitator. He tried to fit some of the broken wires together, simultaneously brushing off some dust; it didn't work. In the depths of the cog, though, Lesaf saw an undamaged data capsule. He reached for it with his left hand, getting mildly shocked and wrecking the cogitator further but evacuating the information.

Plugging it into his own cog, Lesaf disabled the security on it (which seemed to be a half-hearted effort - the chip's main protection was being hidden - but still involved some difficulty) and added his own security program. His brain itched with anticipation, but as long as he had food, he had time. This data came from somewhere mysterious, and he couldn't trust it, no matter how much he wanted to.

Still, as soon as he finished the strictly necessary measures, Lesaf immediately opened the introduction file.

A hologram of Lesaf's father popped up.

"This," it solemnly proclaimed, "is the private cogitator of Pasen Olefle. It contains several tutorials intended for my son, Lesaf; a journal; abundant meteorological data; a gallery of kraken paintings; an admission with explanation; and some opinions about life that, you'll find, are not in the least bit heretical."

Lesaf selected the tutorial.

This was wonderful. Lesaf bubbled with excitement. There were all sorts of new methods in only the first lesson- mostly security-related ones, from both sides. That was probably why they were hidden, in fact. After all, about half of them were illegal. Still, Lesaf had even less respect for the law than it seemed his father did - the Arbites hadn't done much for him, besides trying to drag him off to an orphanage once (it was a half-spirited effort, so after Lesaf escaped they didn't come back).

Using the new information, Lesaf Tarniv-veiled his security systems. It was already the next cycle by the time he was done, and after hiding the materials and eating a bit of tasteless grain he jumped into the couch, now serving as a bed.

That night, Lesaf dreamed of black towers on a planet covered in metal filings. The towers beeped in odd patterns, and people tied to their outside screamed lines of nonsense code. Then Tech-Priests - for this, Lesaf knew, was a Forge World - shot the bound people.

"Why?" some screamed.

"Who?" others yelled.

And one figure turned to the frightened boy and muttered, "Remember me." Lesaf turned toward it.

Lesaf woke up looking at his father's face.

He had had the Forge World nightmare before. He'd heard terrible tales of them- worlds where people were reduced to code, worlds without emotion focused only on gaining knowledge, without purpose, without logic. His mother had warned him not to be like his father, Lesaf remembered; but he had always been like Pasen Olefle. So she had explained to him the horrors that code led the Mechanicum to; and for that, he was grateful. For it was better to have nightmares while asleep than to live in a waking nightmare.

Knowledge must always serve a purpose, his mother had warned. And Lesaf made sure never to go too far.

Nevertheless, after awaking he almost immediately jumped back to the cog. Having accessed the tutorial, he decided to gather clues of his father's killer, and for that purpose clicked on "admission".

A hologram of Lesaf's father, looking wearier than on the main screen and with a bandaged ear, appeared.

"I admit," it said, "to assisting criminal elements in the Underhive occasionally. It was simply the only way to receive money. After being exiled from Junglelight, I needed to keep my family alive somehow, and I was not so desperate as to commit suicide by joining an Underhive manufactorum. Yes, I have given them code; I have never done anything more. My longest and most recent association, as of the current date-" three months before his death- "has been with the Janesse clan. My family has been unaware of my involvement. They are completely innocent, as far as I know; and I am certain my dear Uli would never keep secrets from me."

The holo-vid ended. Lesaf sat down, heavily breathing. It was clear the criminal activity (which, incidentally, indicated Lesaf's lack of care for the law was hereditary after all) had been linked to his father's death. Nothing else was; had Pasen Olefle left the Janesse clan's network and been killed for that? Had he refused a contact with another gang, or been killed out of envy? Was there a more complex story?

Though, frankly, Lesaf wouldn't have worked with the Janesse. They had supposedly been a simple mafia clan in years past- perhaps even seven years ago- but since then they had grown in power and secrecy greatly. It wasn't worth playing the criminal game with grandmasters.

Lesaf selected the journal next. A time selector popped up, and Lesaf chose the last option - the night of his father's death. A video of the dark bedroom appeared.

A gunshot rang out.

Lesaf immediately rewound, even as he burst into tears. A couple moments later, he clamped down with resolve. He would have vengeance yet.

The image ten millicycles earlier showed Pasen Olefle peacefully sleeping. Some time later, as Lesaf was beginning to drift towards sleep himself, the door opened.

He watched the scene closely. It was clearly Lia Janesse that was the culprit, identifiable from the net images even in the dim light. If Lesaf hadn't known what to look for, perhaps it would have been different; but he had.

That was amazing, and its veracity was fairly certain. Unfortunately, Lia Janesse would be difficult to get vengeance on.

She had to die nevertheless.

Lesaf replayed the video, hoping to get some clue to Lia's weakness. If he had been there, knowing he was being recorded- well, he imagined himself making some sort of final signal.

"All I've done" didn't seem to contain a message. It made sense, too- Pasen Olefle had clearly given plenty of assistance to Lia Janesse. "Who's to say I don't" was probably an empty threat- at least, it had been reacted to as such. But the promise of punishment- that was interesting, especially since it seemed to give the killer a moment of pause.

"What you've done with the Emperor's light". And Lesaf had watched enough Key Word to know that Lia Janesse was trending towards heresy. Still, if there was a secret message in there Lesaf's head hurt too much just thinking about it to decode it.

He lay down on the couch instead, not really felling like watching the Legends of the Primarchs episode that was coming up. He knew who had killed his father, and the knowledge ate at him inside.

"The Emperor's light". What could a known crime lord, one that was both too slippery and too influential to get caught, do to the Emperor's light? It was not as if Lesaf's father had been a symbol of legal obedience either. But there was, of course, the possibility of falling to one of the cults Inquisitor Imball sometimes talked about. The Ecclesiarchy sometimes mentioned them by omission- to fall from the Emperor's light was not just to not go to chapel, but also not to pay your dues and… worse things.

Perhaps Janesse was summoning daemons. Perhaps that was the reason for her fabled secrecy. Or….

Opening the video again, he glared at Lia throughout. She hadn't veiled her visage- not yet. But the back of her neck- a single feather showed.

It all made sense. Lia Janesse was a mutant. Quite possibly several of her relatives were, too. That explained their desire to hide, though it made it no easier to kill them- harder, in fact.

With a frustrated grunt, Lesaf turned on Legends of the Primarchs. This time, the subject was Rogal Dorn, smashing apart a heretical cult. The grand problem was that, though many on the planet being fought over were corrupted, most were innocent; thus Dorn had to evacuate the civilians he was certain about. It was when Dorn received an anonymous tip that the transport he was on was infested with cultists that Lesaf got an idea.

Sending the tip was easy; making it trustworthy was harder. Lesaf tried the tutorial over making information seem genuine when in fact it wasn't, and encoded the sending as coming from the region where the Janesse hide-out seemed to be. He attached a video fragment, too- the one showing Janesse's feather. Finally, he added on info pillaged from the Arbite database on Janesse, hoping that no one would know exactly what information had been stolen.

Lesaf wasn't sure of the details, but he had been explained to in detail that convicted cultists died torturously. Lia Janesse had to suffer.

Lesaf felt no need to inflict that suffering personally.

* * *

><p>Lesaf was in a lift when he heard news of the success.<p>

It was a note at first: dark cult headed by noted criminal Lia Janesse cracked.

Then the details began to appear. Apparently, Janesse had been summoning daemons. She had made plans to turn the entire planet into a Daemon World, the details of which the holo-vids didn't talk about. Accompanied by four lieutenants, each of whom had pledged themselves to one of her daemonic allies (again, no details beyond that), she had been plotting the ritual when the Arbite strike team snuck in and decapitated the cult. The head priestess- that is, Janesse- was taken into custody. It had been a delicate operation, and Lesaf was impressed the Arbites had managed to pull it off.

He pumped his fist at the news, even as the rest of the lift descended into frightful muttering.

"What if not all the mutants are gone?"

"What if they come for us?"

"Is it really over?"

For Lesaf, the fact that Janesse was to be given over to the Inquisition was enough to make it over. Still, he tried to stop looking happy.

"Why you so glad, eh?" an older-looking man asked Lesaf. The twelve-year-old tried to come up with a response, the man continued, "Had a feud or some stuff with the Janesses, eh?"

This time, Lesaf didn't even try to answer.

The lift arrived at Lesaf's level, and he began making his way through the crowded and smoky corridors to his apartment. All of the screens were mentioning Janesse, though details varied. The fact of total victory didn't. Janesse was gone.

Vengeance had been achieved.

Lesaf hurried towards his room, scenarios of the future running through his head. He had to admit he wasn't quite sure what to do now. One of the holo-dramas had said that revenge left a hollow feeling, but Lesaf felt quite full- maybe as a result of the relatively expensive restaurant he'd just gone to. He did, however, feel uncertainty over what he could do now.

Perhaps he could join the Arbites. He would probably be useful there, and aid the cause of the God-Emperor. As for respect for the law- well, that could come later. But the Arbites hadn't exactly been nice to him in his life so far, and though Lesaf wouldn't mind helping more criminals get caught he held no warm spot for the enforcers. Besides, he suspected the feeling was mutual.

He could continue as he currently was, a contract worker, his father's heir. And would he end up in the same place, eventually? Juggling many commitments and eventually misjudging one wasn't that improbable.

Or he could fall in with a company. His rise could be meteoric. More likely, though, they would just wring all the energy out of him and then fire the remains.

No matter which way he decided to go, though, his greatest talents- and his path to being someone, or for that matter no one- lay through code. Thus, as soon as he got home, Lesaf Olefle started his cogitator and opened his father's next tutorial.

The face almost made him want to cry. He was gone; and though he could be, and had been, avenged, nothing could bring him back.

The tutorial described ways to determine if you were being spied on. The first thing was, obviously, a reminder to check your security programs, which Lesaf realized he'd just forgotten to do.

The program on his personal cogitator reported nothing. The one he had added on his father's chip, though, reported it had been read through. The program reduced everything that had almost been stolen to junk code, but the attempt was there.

That had never happened before.

Lesaf didn't have any idea of why someone had tried to steal information from him, but it was there. In all probability, it was the Arbites. He shivered at the possibility of what they could have done had they successfully copied the data.

In any case, the culprits would return, trying to get the information again. Perhaps they would bring machinery powerful enough to break through his security- until then, he had to wait here.

Lesaf listened to the rest of the tutorial with rapt attention. The sheer number of ways that data could be stolen in- but then again, knowledge was power, if properly used. It was no surprise that people had devised ways to get it when they didn't have it, or that they spent entire lives in protecting it. It was all part of the great game of power, of protecting the Imperium in one's own way.

He had no idea how to find out who had committed the attempted theft except by their digital signature, but that was too high-level for him to read. If it had been an Arbites operation after all, then it had been a major one- perhaps they'd tracked the tip?

In any case, there was no real incriminating evidence in there. The security program he'd used was mildly illegal, but he would cooperate, and hopefully- considering his youth- he wouldn't get anything at all. Besides, he'd helped the Arbites and the Emperor by explaining to the police the threat Lia Janesse posed, sufficiently that they had finally done something about her. That had to count for something, right?

In any case, it was also highly probable it wasn't the Arbites. He had one way to find out. It was the governor's access determination code- a traded copy, one-use only. He had been saving it for a good opportunity, and this code granted a determination of anyone's signature. Curiosity peaked, he typed the code in.

The security was still too high.

Though it was definitively Imperial.

Had the Inquisition taken an interest in him? Was this somehow linked to the cult? He had nothing to hide from the Emperor- he was loyal, and he would eagerly change his ways if necessary. Besides, he hadn't done much. He was young for his ability, true, so maybe an Inquisitor wanted him in a positive sense; but that seemed doubtful. Or maybe Pasen Olefle had been more than just a coder who had bitten off too much to chew? This was his father's cog, after all.

Plugging in yet more code, Lesaf again attacked the security, this time using his newly learned tricks; it rebuffed him without even seeming to care. This was something far above his level of comprehension. It was, in fact, the sort of thing he should probably have contacted the Arbites with.

In any case, it was a difficulty he could not fix cybernetically. Going around the house and hiding, then preparing, all of his alarms (most of them salvaged from various trash piles), the boy turned his cogitator off and went to sleep.

He dreamt of the Mechanicum again, but this time his father wasn't there. So instead of crying, he attacked a tech-priest. Shocked, the defender let out tentacles and then transformed into a mutant of Chaos.

The other tech-priests ran away, and Lesaf was left alone, pressed to a tower surrounded by broken corpses.

"I will destroy you," the mutant said, and its face became Janesse's.

And then his father swept down on wings of radiant white and decapitated the heretic. Moments later, Lesaf's sleep sank deeper, and the dream faded in ivory flutters.

* * *

><p>Earlier:<p>

Agent X!B2 was only there to check if the attempt had succeeded.

That, at least, was what she told herself. Yet she could admit that it was also something deeper. The boy should have unearthed his father's cogitator by now, and Pasen Olefle had become a person notable throughout the subsector towards the end of his life. There was a high probability his data contained something intriguing; and X!B2, being Vanus, needed data as much as she needed food.

More, actually. She could live on nutrient fluid for some time, but data was her existence.

She was crawling through a maintenance tunnel towards Lesaf's quarters. Though far from possessing the abilities of the Callidus, the Vanus were trained in camouflaging themselves, and now she was probably cutting a typical path to the region under Lesaf. Besides, the tunnels were far from well-maintained, and she doubted there was anyone within them in a one-mile radius.

Once at the coordinates, she scanned the room. Lesaf was gone, having walked off somewhere or other. Working quickly, X!B2 opened up a hole in the wall. The sight that greeted her was rather depressing- the prodigy had accidentally broken his father's cogitator. Still, the data chip was intact.

She was fairly certain it held the information that Lia Janesse had killed Pasen Olefle. What bothered her, what tugged at her, was the promise of all the other information it could contain. Creeping silently, but very rapidly, X!B2 copied down the information from the chip into her implanted memory banks, then fled back through the hole.

Closing it so that it would not be noticed was harder than opening it in the first place, but X!B2 managed; the wall was strong enough to withstand most inspections, though if anyone went looking for a former hole they could find it. She hurried down the tunnel, escaping quickly enough before handing in her uniform and rushing to catch her shuttle off-planet.

It all passed in a haze, so X!B2 only looked at the data when she was preparing to leave the system, seated within a cloaked vessel she'd gotten in via a shuttle believed to have crashed three years ago. She had by this time received the reports of Janesse's arrest.

_Clever boy. But it's a half-failed mission._

Opening the files in large part to counter the overall feeling of dejection- though at least Janesse was dead, or as good as dead- the assassin received a rather negative surprise.

It wasn't as if, when she thought back to it, she hadn't even considered security programs. But there had been one, and the boy had been smart enough to hide it, and she'd just wasted time and energy on obtaining what had turned out to be a bunch of random numbers. Being outwitted hurt. Being outwitted by a twelve-year-old, even one she had specifically noted as a prodigy and relied on to complete the mission…

Well, there was only one thing to do. With an enraged sigh, X!B2, Vanus Temple, walked back into the supposedly destroyed shuttle and prepared to descend.

* * *

><p>Earlier:<p>

Agent X!B2 was only there to kill.

That, at least, was what she had been instructed to do, and she dearly hoped she would succeed. She had served the Emperor for two decades- still young for an assassin of the Vanus temple. Nevertheless, her tally of kills was high, and this was a lower-defenses target than many of her recent ones.

Lia Janesse was a crime lord and a cult leader. She had to be eliminated quickly and secretly, so that the population would not become tainted with the knowledge of Chaos. The best option would involve getting the Arbites to finally do their job. A simple tip, however, could too easily be traced.

Standing in a lift and watching the latest news-vid, X!B2 considered her course of action. She'd already ascertained Janesse had killed a codemaster, Pasen Olefle, seven years ago and left his extremely intelligent son Lesaf behind. The Olefle family had suffered a number of misfortunes after their patriarch's death, and psychological profiles suggested Lesaf desired vengeance. He was likely sufficiently intelligent and powerful to achieve vengeance, as well as having a motive.

X!B2 had only just come out of Lesaf's room, beaming from delight: Pasen Olefle had left a cogitator hidden in the intrahive walls, one which had not been turned on in seven years. It was likely the cog contained enough data to identify the murderer- the Arbites didn't know, but it was easy enough to calculate with an actual investigation.

Thus, if she suggested to Lesaf the idea of secret chambers or of something, at least, hidden in the walls she would have a beginning.

The bug she'd left in Lesaf's holovid beeped with the recognition it was now turned on. Lesaf Olefle was just a child, in the end, and he was watching an ordinary children's holodrama- Key Word. It broadcasted every two cycles, choosing a word and-

And, if the word was chosen right, giving Lesaf the opportunity for his revenge.

It took two hours for X!B2 to get to the studio. The company was responsible for producing not only Key Word, but also over a dozen other holodramas, most of them for adults; thus it wasn't that hard for X!B2 to get in by dying her hair red and then impersonating an actress in a fantastical pre-historic drama that had forgotten the newest episode's script. She was only there to pick up those scripts; X!B2 came in, plugged in her chip, picked up the work in question (which she sent to the actress, so it would seem her not actually coming was a case of minor amnesia) and quickly sent a virus which ensured the randomized topic Key Word would pick tomorrow would be-

Secrets was not an option. That was understandable; Hive World children were rarely educated about important matters via official channels. There seemed to be an unspoken censorship that allowed gossip and rumors to grow unceasingly in their role as providers of taboo and semi-taboo information. X!B2 scanned the list and selected Privacy and Wall as the two topics most likely to give Lesaf Olefle the idea he needed, then ensured those two would come up on the following two days.

It was an admittedly tenuous chain of reasoning, but the kid was almost Vanus in his mindset. The mission would be completed if her hint worked.

If it didn't, well- as the assassin walked out of the studio, she was already selecting three more possibilities.

* * *

><p>When the assassin walks into his room, having easily disabled all of the alarms, the boy is sleeping.<p>

The assassin leans over his left shoulder to reach his ear. "Hello," she says.

The boy is startled. He believes the assassin is trying to kill him. He bolts out of bed, trying to reach a blunt weapon; but the assassin is faster by far. She has trained for this, after all. The assassin grabs the boy's leg, pulling him back.

"Who are you?" the boy asks her, afraid- terrified!- but not stammering, not showing it, because he fears showing terror, because to know fear is death in the Underhive and little better here.

She tells him.

The boy nods. "So you're here to kill me?" he asks. He's less afraid than he imagined himself being at this moment. His duty is completed; he has avenged his father. He is ready to die.

"I was not sent to this world to kill you," she responds.

And the assassin explains. She explains the mission- to kill the cultist, and to keep the matter secret so the Inquisition doesn't have to bother itself about it. She explains her method- the tilted random number generator and the hope the boy would come up with a method of murder. She explains her infiltration- the hunger for data, the ambition to rise that drives that hunger, the resulting error and the state of being caught. She explains all of that in complex language because she's never yet explained it to anyone outside her temple before, because she's never trusted anyone outside the temple before. She still doesn't.

The boy is amazed, too. If he is to die, at least he will die with this knowledge inside him. He regrets not having had a chance to use it, but his curiosity is sated. He marvels at the Vanus temple, and imagines another life.

"So you're here to kill me for reading your data?" the boy asks.

The assassin shakes her head. She has no desire to kill the boy. A simple mind-wipe will do the job if necessary. "I'm here to make an offer," she says.

The boy is curious. In a corner of his mind, he already knows the truth; but the vast majority of him is not yet ready for it, the majority of him would not believe it if it stared him in his face.

The assassin doesn't care.

"You have righteous rage in your heart," she says. "Great talent and intelligence. The willingness to murder. Hope. Faith in the Emperor. Do you want to see the stars and kill demigods?"

The boy does. He is still afraid this is not real, though. And he thinks this is a test, though he has passed the test long ago. He is paranoid, the boy. It will serve him well.

"What if I say no?" he asks with just the right intonation. "Will you kill me?"

"I will alter your recollections. You will have no memory of this event and my existence," the assassin answers.

The boy has doubts, but he does not voice them. He thinks he is gambling for his life. In a sense, he is right. The assassin, meanwhile, is shocked by the boy's uncertainty. Is there someone here he still cares about?

The boy hesitates, but not too long. "I want to," he says. "I want to be like you. Can I?"

"Yes," the assassin replies. "You have it in you. But whether you will is another matter."

They sit like that for a minute, each digesting their decision. The boy knows that he has chosen his life. The assassin knows she has chosen his life, too. But both also know they have chosen the deaths of others- hopefully many others.

"I am not ready yet," the boy says. "Where will you take me?"

"To the temple," the assassin explains.

"I- I will leave now. As soon as I gather-"

"You will not need those things anymore."

As the boy looks over his cogitator and his father's data chip, he knows that the assassin is completely right. He has few possessions, and even fewer unique ones that he must destroy. He leaves his father's books and his mother's bracelet behind; his past is gone now, completed with his vengeance. He selects his cogitator and waits for a few minutes for the data chip to clear, then does the same to the cogitator.

"Are you ready?" the assassin asks.

"I hope so."

And the assassins exit a chamber of memories.


End file.
